


The Next 7 Shots

by KC_Polar_Bear



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), UnDeadwood (Web Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:02:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29413812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KC_Polar_Bear/pseuds/KC_Polar_Bear
Summary: “Easy, Clay,” Matthew said, his voice as calming as he could make it, a hand outstretched as if toward a frightened deer. “We’ve been in here for over an hour and we weren’t exactly quiet just then. Throwing those doors open would be a real shitty way to find out they had reinforcements waiting.”Sequel to 7 Shots.
Kudos: 9





	1. Interlude: Heaven Fire Up My Blood

**Author's Note:**

> This is a direct sequel to 7 Shots, so read that first if you haven't.
> 
> The first chapter is an interlude that ties the two gunfights together; the action kicks in in Chapter 2.
> 
> Title inspired by "7 Shots" by Volbeat.

_Interlude_

“Come on,” Clayton said, striding toward the front doors. “We’re done. Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

“Easy, Clay,” Matthew said, his voice as calming as he could make it, a hand outstretched as if toward a frightened deer. “We’ve been in here for over an hour and we weren’t exactly quiet just then. Throwing those doors open would be a real shitty way to find out they had reinforcements waiting.”

Clayton stopped and turned halfway toward Matthew, his back mostly to the doors. “Matt. Look around you. Does Bella look like she’s in any state to just sit around here all fuckin’ night?” His eyes ticked away to a point over Matthew’s shoulder. “Don’t even fuckin’ argue, Bella, you had two spells goin’ at once and you could barely fuckin’ stand a second ago. You look like shit.”

“ _Clay._ ” Matthew’s voice dropped an octave, unconsciously harmonizing with the growl that Arabella made from somewhere behind him. “All I’m asking is that you take a look out a window or something before you just…” his mouth worked its way around words he couldn’t quite bring to the surface. “What’d you call it, Aly?”

“Charging dick-first into danger?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

Arabella snorted; Matthew wasn’t sure if it was at what Aly said or the color Clayton’s face was beginning to turn. Clayton curled his lip into a snarl and turned on his heel, moving with the intensity of a man about to do something just for the fuck of it, and stepped right up to the doors. He came to an abrupt halt, turned, made eye contact with Matthew and shot his arm out, shoving the free-swinging doors so they swung out away from him, nearly slamming into the sides of the doorway. If he’d had half a thought to do it, Matthew might’ve tried to look past him through the doorway, but he was too busy being mad at Clayton to think about anything else.

There was a long moment of tense silence as the doors swung out and in, out and in, clattering against each other before finally coming to a stop.

Matthew let his shoulders sink the slightest bit when the night didn’t erupt into gunfire again. Vindicated, Clayton threw his arms up and let them flop back down to his sides. “See? Nothing to fuckin’ worry about. Now can we _please_ just –“

There was a _pop_ and a piece of the door exploded into splinters less than six inches from Clayton’s face.

“ _Fuck_!” The lanky gunslinger flung himself away from the door, tucking into a roll and coming up behind one of the overturned tables, already reaching for his pistols. Matthew dove to his right to take the position beside him, wincing as his knees bounced off the hard wooden floor.

“The fuck did I say?” He hissed, hands fumbling to break the stock on his shotgun and slide in two new shells.

Clayton glared at him again. “Fuckin’ jinxed it, is what you did.”

Matthew slammed the stock of his shotgun back into place. “That’s a damn weird way of saying _thank you,_ but since your brain apparently slid out of your ass during the last fight, I’ll take it.” Before Clayton could get another retort in, a man’s voice shouted at them from outside.

“Good evenin’, folks!” The voice was deep, even deeper than Matthew’s, and boomed through the silence, echoing in the still air after the man stopped. “How y’all doin’ on this beautiful night?”

Matthew and Clayton exchanged bewildered glances, any trace of animosity gone. _The fuck?_ Clayton mouthed. Matthew shrugged, nestling his shotgun into his shoulder. He lifted his free hand to his temple, index finger extended, and drew a few tiny circles in the air. Clayton smiled, nudging Matthew’s shoulder with his own. Matthew smiled back, the two of them stifling manic giggles like two rowdy schoolboys.

Their attention was snapped back to the present by something heavy bouncing against Matthew’s back. The big man came within a hair’s breadth of firing his shotgun on pure instinct before the projectile bounced off the floor behind him and came to a rest against his leg. The two of them looked down to see one of the dead men’s boots lying on the floor, a trickle of blood beginning to congeal around the mouth.

The two of them turned as one to behold Miriam, crouched near the stairs with Arabella, fixing them in a death glare. Matthew smiled sheepishly, a flash of heat running up the side of his neck. Clayton tensed beside him, coiling his body like a snake about to strike, clearly feeling none of Matthew’s embarrassment.

“Now they told me y’all were a buncha cold-blooded sumbitches but no one told me you’d be so _rude_ ,” the man’s voice boomed out again. “Or is this how you bumblefucks from Deadwood treat everyone who invites you into their town?”

“Only the ones who try to kill us, ya smug motherfucker!” Clayton yelled back, rising into a crouch to amplify his voice. Matthew jerked at the sound of his voice and punched him in the side of the knee, knocking him onto his ass.

“What the holy _fuck_ , Clay?” he whispered.

Clayton just grinned at him and shrugged. “C’mon, Rev, they already knew I was here, why the hell not?” A retort about not antagonizing a clearly unhinged man died on Matthew’s tongue; he rocked back onto his heels and rolled his eyes as the man’s voice came back again.

“Terribly sorry to hear about that,” he said in the voice of a man comforting a dog before he put it down. “Unfortunately we’re going to need to confirm that before we can let you just stroll out of town.” There was a pause, and Matthew could _see_ in his mind the cocky smirk on the bastard’s face (a face he imagined was a sweaty, flabby blob of pale pink skin protruding directly out of the shoulders with no visible neck to speak of). “So if you would be so very kind as to lay your weapons down and walk slowly, one by one, out into the street, we can put all of this… _unpleasantness_ …behind us.” He chuckled a little. “I’ll give you a minute to think about it.”

Matthew was gripping the edge of the table and pulling himself to his feet before he realized what he was doing. At the questioning looks from his companions, he rolled his neck, slung his shotgun up onto one shoulder, and gave them a smirk of his own.

“People just keep saying that _word_ to me tonight,” he said, curling the fingers of his other hand around the crucifix in his pocket. “Y’all should find a better place to take cover while we have a chance. I’d like to at least try to talk our way out of this before we go fully Old Testament again.”

Clayton and Aly rose angrily to their feet and started to protest, but Arabella cut them off.

“Gentlemen,” she said softly but firmly. “The Reverend is right.”

Even Matthew raised an eyebrow at that. Miriam looked at Arabella like she’d just grown a second head – as though that would be anywhere close to the weirdest thing they’d seen in the last year – but the younger woman ignored her and stepped carefully toward Matthew, picking her way over bodies and broken pieces of chairs until she was right next to him.

“I should probably take this, though,” she said, easing the shotgun out of his hand like she was coaxing a wolf into handing over its kill. He let her take it, not taking his eyes off her face, the look she fixed him with making him feel immensely powerful and yet breathlessly docile all at once. “You’re intimidating enough without it; they see it in your hand they might start shooting before you get a word out.” The weapon slid from his hand, which stayed where it was against his shoulder, his eyes narrowing in confusion. She smiled devilishly at him and leaned in until she was inches from his ear. He saw Miriam frowning at him over her shoulder and he shrugged, arching his eyebrows at her in a silent question. She just shook her head, and he frowned himself as Arabella whispered into his ear.

“That spell I cast on you a few minutes ago?” She whispered. He grunted quietly in understanding. “It didn’t just make you faster and more aware.” He stepped back away from her, both hands held out in front of him.

“Bella,” he said softly, his voice nearly a whisper, pitched low with worry. “What did you do?”

She slung his shotgun up over her shoulder the same way he had and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. He suddenly realized how exhausted she looked, hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, her skin turning a faint green shade around her cheeks; her eyes were bloodshot, bags forming beneath them as though she hadn’t slept in days. She smiled at him through lips that had lost much of their color and said, “I got a fuckin’ _great_ hand, is what I did.”

Miriam had heard that last part. He knew the second she drew in a sharp breath through her teeth. There was a clattering as she stumbled forward toward Arabella, almost shaking with fury. “You said you didn’t use a joker this time,” she growled at Arabella, her voice the sound of steel scraping over stone. “Just what the fucking hell _else_ are you not telling us?”

“I’m getting to that if you’d let me finish,” Arabella snapped over her shoulder. She started to turn back to Matthew but stopped halfway and whipped back around to Miriam as though suddenly realizing what she’d just said. “And I said I didn’t use a joker because I _didn’t use a fucking joker_ ,” she growled, making slashing gestures with her free hand for emphasis. She turned back to Matthew, who raised an eyebrow at her. She sighed. “The second one was a three-of-a-kind. Thought you’d like that, _Father_. Lucky sevens.” He nodded, glancing over her head at Miriam, who scowled at the back of Arabella’s head like she could read her thoughts through her skull.

“And the first one,” Arabella continued, breathing heavier now, a delirious laugh splitting her face. “Let’s just say I took some inspiration from our old friend Wild Bill.”

Matthew and Miriam frowned at each other over Arabella’s head, bewildered, before Aly spoke up from across the room, eyes widening with amusement. “Aces and eights?”

Arabella met his eye and nodded frantically, her grin growing wider. “Full house, aces full of eights.”

“You cast a spell with a fuckin’ Dead Man’s Hand?” Clayton asked with a laugh of surprise. “Jesus, Bella, that sounds like bad luck even to me.”

“Hey, it worked, didn’t it?” She retorted, the grin not leaving her face. “And it gets better.”

“Oh, that’s comforting,” Miriam muttered, burying her face in her hand.

Arabella just barreled on. “The spell I cast on you was fairly basic, I was just doing it as an extra precaution since you were the closest person to me. But with a hand that good, I had so much extra power left over that I got a little bonus.”

“Time’s runnin’ out quick, kids!” The voice boomed in from outside again. Clayton turned over his shoulder and shouted back out the door.

“Nobody’s goin’ anywhere, shitbag, put your fuckin’ dick away!” No response came and Clayton turned back to them with a triumphant grin on his face.

“Nice one, Shakespeare,” Aly muttered, turning back to Arabella. “You were sayin’?”

“Maybe it should wait,” Matthew said, twirling the knife from earlier between his fingers for a moment before sliding it up one sleeve. “Sounds like our friends are getting impatient. We probably ought to –“

“ _Matt,_ ” Arabella said, grabbing a handful of his jacket and tugging him back toward her. “That spell I cast on you was so powerful it bought you a free pass.”

He frowned at her. “A what?”

“A free pass,” she repeated, gently shaking his jacket as if she could force understanding into him. “As in, if you cast a spell in the next hour you don’t even have to play. You win, any spell you want, no questions asked, with whatever power was left over from my full house.”

They all stared at her for a moment, jaws slack, faces paling, as though waiting for the punchline. Clayton recovered first, licking his lips and stepping toward her. “Is…is that a _thing_? Y’all have gotten some pretty good hands before.”

“Sketchy as that fangy fucker may be, he hasn’t lied to us yet,” Matthew said softly, staring at Arabella’s face as though he could find a lie written on her skin. “If you believe it, that’s good enough for me.”

“That rosary’s gonna burn itself into your own hand by the time you’re done, Padre,” Clayton said with a smirk and something like admiration.

“All right then,” Aly said, pulling back the bolt on his rifle. “Sounds like we have a plan.”

“Plan?” Miriam asked incredulously. “What is this plan? I’ve heard no plan.”

“We have the makings of a plan. We have the blurry outline of a plan,” Clayton said, already moving for the stairs. “The four of us find a real good place to take cover, aim everything at the door, and Matty here…” he looked at Matthew, eyebrows arched expectantly. Matthew turned and flashed his winning smile at Miriam.

“I do what I do best,” he said, wrapping a hand around his crucifix. “Spread the good word of the Lord.”

That drew the first genuine laugh of the night out of Miriam. She turned away from Matthew and pointed at the others one at a time. “You three are a terrible influence.” She pulled her gun back out of its holster and thumbed the hammer. “And for the record, this isn’t a plan. This is us standing here while someone yells the word ‘plan’ at us from the next room.”

Aly waved her off. “Ah, that’s all we’ve needed so far, Miss Miriam. Besides, you know what they say about the details, right Preacher?”

“Indeed, that’s where the Devil is,” Matthew said solemnly, folding his hands in front of his chest. “And I know you don’t want to invite _him_ into this, Miriam.”

Miriam jabbed another finger at Aly. “Horrible. Horrible influence.” Even as she said it, though, she couldn’t keep the smile off her face. Instead, she hefted her pistol and turned to follow Clayton to the stairs.

Aly walked right up next to Matthew as he moved to follow them, bumping his shoulder against the Reverend’s much larger one. “We got your back, Matty. Fuck ‘em up.” The two men exchanged nods and turned away from each other, Aly jogging to the bar to find cover while Matthew stepped toward the door. He took a long, deep breath, the fresh air from outside mingling with the tangy scents of blood and gunpowder from inside the saloon. Then, his fingers curling around his crucifix, he squared his shoulders, set his jaw and placed both hands on the swinging doors.

“Gentlemen!” He bellowed, with as much confidence as he could muster, fixing his face into the same smile he would give a parishioner leaving the confessional booth. He gently pushed the doors open in front of him, took a tentative step forward, and was immediately greeted by a rapidfire series of clicks as what seemed like dozens of firearms were cocked and leveled at him.

Matthew scanned the street, blinking and squinting as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. A line of men stood spread out in the street before him, what looked like at least a dozen at first glance; each held some sort of weapon, rifles or pairs of pistols or, in one man’s case, a shotgun much like Matthew’s own. He flung both hands out wide and spread his fingers, letting the rosary loop around his middle finger and dangle the crucifix in front of his palm.

“Whoa, there, fellas!” He said with a genial laugh, as though trying to calm a spooked horse. “That ain’t all just for me, is it?”

A man stepped forward from the middle of the line, heavyset, balding, skin splotchy and flushed with pink, wearing an ill-fitting suit that pulled taut against its poor innocent buttons in all the wrong places. He casually tipped the barrel of his pistol against his wrinkled forehead, nose twitching above a paper-white mustache that curled around each corner of his mouth.

“Evenin’, Reverend,” he said, his voice immediately recognizable. Matthew fought back the urge to grin, relishing in how spot-on his first impression had been. “Interestin’ to find a man of the cloth in a place like this, ‘specially after all that’s happened here tonight.”

Matthew smiled his most charming, non-threatening smile. “Fear not, my son,” he said, layering his voice with as much paternal gentleness as he could muster. “The servants of the Lord may find themselves in all sorts of places. All the better to spread His word.” He let his eyes wander over the small army of men who lined the street, checking faces, weapons, body types, the alleyways and doorways and windows behind them, and filing it away like his cavalry training – and Aly and Clayton – had taught him. Glancing back to the leader, he wiggled his fingers and said, “Now would it be all right if I let my arms down? As you can see, I’m armed with nothing but the word of the Lord, and even that is a bit of a strain on the shoulders.”

The heavyset man pointed his pistol into the air and spun the barrel around in a small, lazy circle. “Do us a favor and turn around first, Reverend, if you wouldn’t mind.” The man’s voice was deliberately pitched low in a way that would’ve been calming, but he couldn’t hide the condescending smirk and the casual motioning with his pistol that shifted his tone much further toward mocking and smug. “I’d just like to be sure you ain’t got no surprises waitin’ for us.”

Matthew thought Clayton would’ve been proud of the stream of sarcastic retorts that flitted through his brain like startled hummingbirds, but he was far too comfortable in his unassuming gentle giant skin to allow the façade to break. He kept the naïve smile plastered to his face and turned in a slow circle, showing the men his back. He paused, just for a moment, with his back to the street, and mouthed the words, _Twelve, civilian, armed_ , to any of his friends who could see his face from their hiding places. He finished his rotation, and at the curt nod he got from the heavyset man, he lowered his hands and let one slip casually into his pocket, while the other he let dangle to his side, absently twisting the beads of the rosary around his fingers.

“Now Rev’rend,” the heavyset man said, taking a step toward him, his boots scraping up small clouds of dust off the flattened dirt of the main road through this small town. “I’m well aware of what the Bible says about curiosity, but I’m mighty interested to know what all the commotion inside this establishment was all about.”

“Certainly, my son,” Matthew said, letting that well-practiced persona that Arabella so fondly referred to as his “big teddy bear” posture slide over him like a warm blanket. “If you wouldn’t mind my indulgence in my own curiosity, how do your and your noble companions find yourselves here this evening?”

The man said nothing, just slowly pulled his jacket back to reveal the Sheriff’s star pinned to his waistcoat, the polished silver glistening in the moonlight. Matthew whistled appreciatively. “Is there a name to go along with that fine piece of insignia, Sheriff…?”

“Samson,” the heavyset man said, lifting his free hand almost reflexively rub at his rapidly thinning hair. This time the smirk was impossible to hold back, but fortunately Matthew’s joke about the irony of that name stayed locked under his tongue.

“Sheriff Samson,” Matthew said, as though repeating a word in a new language. “Well, I’m sure a man as experienced in the…darker side of human nature as you are is well aware of what the, um… _commotion_ was inside this establishment, as you so aptly put it. My companions and I were here on a business venture from Deadwood and things took a turn for the…” he paused and made eye contact with Samson, arching his eyebrows. “… _unpleasant_. And we were forced to act in self-defense.” He gestured back over his shoulder. “I should warn you, Sheriff, it’s not a pretty sight in there.”

Samson eyed him for a moment. “All due respect, Father, but between the war and my job here I’ve seen my fair share of the gruesome. And no offense, but my men and I will want to be making that determination for ourselves.” He let his jacket fall back into place and stepped forward again until he was right in front of the two steps that led down from the saloon porch to the street. “So if you and your companions would be so kind as to step out here and surrender your weapons, we can put all of this behind us.”

Matthew didn’t flinch, didn’t move from where he stood, just kept beaming down at him. “Now, Sheriff, we have women and injured people in our party who are in no shape to be outdoors at the moment. I’m sure we can find a way to compromise here.” He gestured with his head over Samson’s shoulder at the men who still held their guns at the ready behind him. “Perhaps you and your men would prefer to come inside, out of the dark and the cold, and I’m sure that my companions and I would be more than happy to answer any questions you may have.”

There was a long moment when Matthew honestly thought Samson might not bite. His fingers tapped against his leg inside his pocket, his toes curled and straightened inside his boots. He silently slid the beads of his rosary forward and backwards, tracing the shape of his crucifix against his palm. Finally, after 49 breaths – he’d counted, a tactic he’d found for keeping his heart rate down – Samson seemed to soften, sighing so hard his whole body seemed to deflate. He gestured with his head and the line of men behind him let their weapons fall to their sides and started to move toward the door, forming two neat, almost military single-file lines as they walked.

It was all he could do to keep from grinning; his stomach fluttered up into the base of his throat with exhilaration, feeling his palms start to heat up with nervous energy. Matthew began slowly walking backward into the saloon, away from the doors, letting them swing shut in front of him but never losing sight of the sheriff and his posse over the top of the swinging planks. Every couple of steps his heels would bump against things – loose floorboards, broken pieces of furniture, the arm or leg of the occasional dead body – but he kept going, deftly navigating his way back toward the center of the massive main room.

The men entered the saloon two at a time, fanning out as they breached the doorway like sand through an hourglass. Matthew watched as each pair of men took in the scene before them; several of them winced, faces flushing as they beheld one mangled corpse or another; others covered their mouths and noses at the violent smell; there were one or two who remained stone-faced, seemingly unaffected by the surrounding carnage, but they stayed near the rear of the group, taking up positions on either side of the door.

Samson came last, lazily swinging the doors open with one hand and the barrel of his gun. Matthew stood, completely exposed, in the center of the enormous open space, at parade rest, his eyes not leaving the sheriff’s impassive face. His fingers continued absently playing with his rosary beads where they lay clasped loosely at the small of his back. Samson glanced to his left, and then slowly raked his gaze across the room to his right, taking in every splintered table and chair, every spent shell, every pool and splatter of blood, and every crumpled body that littered the floor. Finally his eyes clicked back to Matthew’s, and the younger man offered him a small smile, inclining his head just a touch.

“As you can see, Sheriff,” he said, not moving, not breaking his gaze. “Things took a rather unfortunate turn for the violent in this establishment tonight.” He caught a flicker of motion off to his left and watched from the corner of his eye as one of the other men behind the sheriff started to raise his pistol toward where he’d seen Clayton move to take cover near the top of the stairs. Not betraying a thing, Matthew watched as the man seemed to lose sight of whatever he thought was there and let the pistol fall back to his side.

“I can see that, Rev’rend,” Samson said, thumb brushing over the hammer of his gun. “Which begs the question of how you and…” he cast a series of furtive glances around the room over Matthew’s head. “The one other man whose voice we heard and the women you mentioned managed to cause all this damage and still be standing when it was over.” He slowly raised his gun to point it straight at Matthew’s face again. “Seems the rumors about your group being a bunch of damn witches who’d made a deal with the Devil were true.”

Matthew just smiled a little wider, his heart rate only increasing very slightly at the gun in his face.

It was far from the first time.

“Easy, Sheriff,” he said, starting to feel the magic from Bella’s free extra spell begin to draw up into his body. His voice was soft, calm and comforting, but he slid the slightest hint of steel in behind it. “I’m sure a good Christian man like yourself is well aware of what they say about witches.” Samson cocked his head to one side like a confused dog. Matthew vaguely noticed that the other men around him, upon hearing the word “witches,” had turned their attention back to him and begun to close in.

“A witch’s soul,” Matthew continued, eyes shifting from one man to the next, dancing around the group like a frantic mosquito. “Is so dark and vile and corrupted that the poor wretch cannot even recite the Lord’s Prayer all the way through.” He glanced around the room again, gambling on the reflexive, performative piety this part of the world was known for. “You all know the Lord’s Prayer, don’t you, gentlemen?” Without waiting for a reply, he locked eyes with Samson again, slowly raising his hands to fold them in front of him. “Shall we pray together?”

Samson lowered his gun and held up a hand to his men, chuckling derisively. “Sure, Reverend. That oughtta work for last rites, eh? Two birds, one stone and all that?” He grinned viciously. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Matthew smiled softly. “Thank you, my son,” he said, taking a deep breath and letting his eyes fall shut. The words of the familiar prayer slid smoothly off his tongue as if by muscle memory.

“Our Father, who art in Heaven…”

Past the sound of his own voice, Matthew could hear the men surrounding him begin to shift their weight, floorboards creaking around him as they moved closer. He heard the rustling of fabric moving, the harsh mechanical clicking of gun parts, the occasional cough.

“Hallowed be thy name…”

A gentle breeze swept in from the outside, wicking away a few beads of sweat from his forehead.

“Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done…”

Matthew let himself recede into his head, his consciousness puling away from the world around him further and further until he found himself standing at a poker table, green felt beneath his hand and five cards spread out before him – ace of hearts, eight of clubs, ace of diamonds, eight of spades, ace of spades. His mouth curled up around one corner. _Thanks, Bella_. He didn’t look up. He didn’t sit down. He just tapped his finger twice against the ace of diamonds and spoke a single word out loud.

“On Earth as it is in Heaven…”

Just like that, he slammed back into his body, feeling the last lingering movements of his lips as his mouth continued of its own accord.

“Give us this day our daily bread…”

The rosary looped around his hands began to feel warm against his skin. He didn’t dare open his eyes for fear that the crucifix would be glowing. The knife he’d slipped into his left sleeve shifted along his arm, rough and cold.

“And forgive us our trespasses…”

He was suddenly struck by an inspiration so powerful it had to have been divine. He shifted his feet ever so slightly, bracing himself inside his boots.

“As we forgive those who trespass against us…”

There were other voices around him now, he realized. A few of the men crowded around him had begun to recite the prayer themselves, that good old-fashioned frontier evangelism rearing its head once again.

“Lead us not into temptation…”

Now or never. Matthew popped his eyes open and turned without warning, pointing a finger at one of the men who had been echoing him out loud.

“But…?” He raised his eyebrows expectantly.

The man answered as though by reflex, conditioned by a lifetime of repetition into supplying the next line of the prayer.

“Deliver us from evil.”

Matthew beamed, feeling the corners of his mouth curl up just the slightest bit further than any human mouth should have been able to. He lowered the hand he’d pointed with and met the man’s eye. “Son,” he said with a chuckle. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Before anyone could so much as move toward him, Matthew threw both arms out to his sides, his crucifix dangling from his left hand, the fingers splayed on his right. His head fell backward onto his shoulders, his eyes squeezed shut, and he felt a playing card appear seemingly from nowhere and slide out from the cuff of his sleeve into his right hand, slotting perfectly between his first two fingers.

He screamed a single word, in a language even he didn’t know, and the entire world went white.


	2. 7 Shots in the Night

_One_

From where he’d crouched, balls of his feet digging into the wood floor of the balcony, shoulder braced against the railing, the metal of his pistols refreshingly cool in his palms, Clayton listened as Matthew somehow managed to get almost an entire posse of armed men to start reciting the Lord’s Prayer with him.

_Typical_ , he thought, suppressing a chuckle. _Mason could sell sand to a fuckin’ camel – these dumb shits had no idea who they were talking to._

There was a pause, and he heard Mason hesitate. Clayton frowned, gently leveraging himself up so he could peek out over the top of the railing. From his vantage point he could see Matthew’s back where he stood in the middle of the saloon, the group of a dozen or so armed men gradually closing in around him; he could see Miriam and Arabella, each woman crouched near the top of one of the stairwells on the opposite sides of the room, hidden by the bannisters where the stairs turned inward toward the balcony; and he knew that if he dared, he could push himself up just that little bit higher and see Aly, waiting behind the bar, the dead woman’s blood seeping into his boots.

His fingers flexed around the handles of his pistols as he watched Matthew turn abruptly and level a finger at one of the men standing around him.

“But…?”

Matthew’s voice was expectant, coaxing, as though prompting an unsure student to respond to a question. Clayton couldn’t see his face, but he wasn’t naïve enough to think the Reverend didn’t have a plan here. But he’d already let this entire small army of men just march right in through the front doors and surround him, and it sure didn’t seem like he was in any particular hurry.

What the fuck was he waiting for?

Clayton ran his tongue over his teeth, straining his ears to hear Mason talking over the pounding of his own heart.

_Any day now, Matt._

The man Matthew had pointed to dutifully offered up the next line of the prayer, and the way Matthew grinned back at him was so predatory, so _feral_ , that Clayton almost pitied the poor son of a bitch.

“Son,” Matthew’s rich voice rumbled through the room. Clayton knew that tone. He watched from his periphery as the women tensed, Arabella readying Matthew’s shotgun against her shoulder. He thumbed both of his hammers back and rose to a knee, coiling his body like a spring. He’d made a point of not calling on the Dealer himself after the one time hadn’t gone so well, but in this moment he saw the appeal.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Clayton barely had time to be confused before Matthew flung his arms out to his sides, let his head fall back and screamed to the sky, in a voice not his own, a word that Clayton didn’t understand. It was guttural, grating, the sound of meat tearing free from bone, and so deep that the windows in the front wall rattled in their frames.

Matthew’s body erupted into a flash of blinding white light, brighter than anything Clayton had ever seen. For a brief instant it was like staring directly into the sun, his entire world reduced to nothing but that all-consuming brightness. At first he thought a bomb had gone off, or the saloon had been struck by lightning, but some distant part of him realized that both of those things would have made a sound, and the only sound he’d heard was whatever sound Matthew had made, still reverberating off the walls of the saloon like a ricocheting bullet.

Before he could even try and blink the glare out of his eyes, the flash had faded, and he watched as six beams of light as big around as train cars exploded from Matthew’s body, rocketing out in front of him in a semicircle and slamming into the tightly clustered men in front of him. Some of the men were flung to one side or another, bouncing off the walls and the floor and each other like ragdolls as they tumbled away from the epicenter.

Others took the beams straight on, and Clayton saw piles of limbs topple to the ground around where Matthew stood, their entire torsos completely disintegrated by the beams of… _whatever_ that were coming out of him. The man standing directly in front of Matthew, the big, pudgy one who’d been yelling at them from outside, had vanished entirely; the only trace Clayton could find was a scorch mark on the floor next to a still-smoking pair of disembodied boots.

The light faded after what couldn’t have been more than a second, and Matthew toppled over backward, flopping bonelessly to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. Clayton was on his feet before he had a chance to think, pistol sliding from one prone body to another.

“ _Matt?_ ” He glanced anxiously back and forth from Matthew to the remaining men on the floor. The first man back to his feet shook his head a few times and grabbed his gun from where it had fallen, brandishing it as he charged toward Matthew. Clayton raised the pistol in his right hand and pulled the trigger.

_Click_.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he muttered, frantically banging the butt of the pistol against the bannister. The man below him came to a stop and raised his own gun toward Matthew. Clayton flipped the now useless pistol over so he was holding it by the barrel. “Hey fuckstick!” He shouted; the man turned at the sound and Clayton threw the gun at him, swapping the other one into his newly free hand. The butt of the pistol clocked him right in the jaw, whipping his head around and sending him to one knee.

There was a series of groans as more of the men lying on the floor – about six of them, from what Clayton could see – began to get to their feet and pick their weapons back up. The man Clayton had hit twisted and brought his gun up to aim it at Clayton this time.

The second gun worked perfectly. The man was whipped backward, his shoulders bouncing off the floor as a splash of bone and blood and brain matter sprayed across the wood behind him. His gun clattered away from his limp hand, coming to rest against the pile of disembodied limbs and head that had once been the man standing next to him.

Clayton kept the trigger squeezed down and raised his other hand to prepare for another shot. The remaining men – it looked like there were another five besides the one he’d just shot who were already on their feet – had begun to fan out, one moving toward each staircase and the rest charging toward the bar where Aly had taken cover.

“Fogg, get ready, they’re comin’ to you!” Clayton called out, glancing left and right at each staircase. “Ladies, brace yourselves, this party’s just gettin’ started.”

_Two_

Miriam curled her fingers around the butt of her pistol, blinking the fading glare of Matthew’s spell out of her eyes. At Clayton’s shout, she had leveraged herself up onto one knee, left shoulder leaning against the solid part of the bannister, and gently pulled back the hammer. Her heart rattled against her ribcage, a bead of sweat trailing down the back of her neck into the collar of her dress; she bounced anxiously on the toes of one foot, feeling the coarse wood of the saloon floor beneath where her knee rested near the edge of the stairs.

Miriam had always considered herself as more of a talker than a fighter, preferring to charm and trick and threaten her way out of bad situations rather than resorting to brute force. She was a major subscriber to the idea that the smartest people in the world were the ones who understood their own shortcomings, and she knew she would nearly always be outmatched in a straight-up fistfight. She had none of Matthew’s size, strength or military training, Clayton’s agility or hand-to-hand prowess, or Aly’s pain tolerance.

And then there was Arabella, and her skill with their newfound abilities and willingness to indulge in it. It was something that had tugged Miriam’s razor-sharp mind in several different directions since they had woken up in that godforsaken desert all those long months ago, veins glowing blue and eyes sparkling with unnatural energy. On the one hand, it had always felt a bit like an insurance policy, a reassuring _deus ex machina_ safety net for when the typical solutions of their world didn’t pack enough of a punch.

On the other hand, it felt like for every two or three times the spells worked there was another time they went massively fucking wrong, as the gentle clouds of shadow curling around her right arm and the frenzied, unintelligible whispers bouncing around in her head would attest.

For the tenth or eleventh time that night, she missed her Winchester rifle, pictured in her mind where it sat strapped against the back of the horse she’d ridden into town, both just down the street and half a world away; she longed for a good vantage point, a few stories up and a few hundred feet back, Aly stretched prone beside her as they fired potshots into the scuffle. She and Matthew had agreed it would’ve been too obvious for her to walk in with it draped over her back tonight as he had his shotgun, but as she knelt here now she wished she’d told him to shove his chivalry up his ass and not left herself with the tiny revolver she carried strapped to her leg for emergencies.

But as she listened to the footsteps pounding their way up the stairs, and saw the shadow approach her, and heard Clayton scream Matthew’s name with a level of fear she wasn’t used to from him, she reminded herself that dwelling on things that weren’t would do nothing to change the things that were. They were outnumbered, Matthew may have been hurt or worse, and she was running out of time.

Her brilliant mind made up, Miriam tightened her grip on her pistol and surged forward, curling her body around the edge of the stairway and raising the weapon in front of her.

The man before her was in the process of lifting his leg to take the next step, about six or seven steps down from her position. Miriam ticked her weapon down and fired at the floor where he was about to step, sending a spray of splinters into the air.

The impact knocked the man off balance and he staggered to his left, crashing shoulder first into the bannister, which cracked under his weight. The sudden movement made him reflexively fire his own weapon; Miriam flinched out of the way, but she felt the bullet ricochet off the parrel of her pistol, torqueing it out of her grip and sending it clattering to the ground behind her.

It also knocked her slightly off balance, pivoting her on her planted foot so she landed on her ass on the stairs, directly facing the man approaching her. The man raised his weapon again, pulling back the hammer for another shot, and Miriam acted completely on instinct. She held up her right arm, palm out, fingers splayed as though to shield herself, but instead, before the man could fire, a twisting rope of dark, thick, pulsating shadow erupted from the palm of her hand and wrapped around his neck like a noose.

She whipped her arm to one side, bashing him against the wall. His gun slipped from his grip and bounced down the stairs, his eyes bulging in horror. She clenched her fist and yanked her arm toward her, slamming him headfirst into the stairs with an immensely gratifying _crack_. He grunted with pain, and she threw him into the wall again, hard enough to leave a dent in the wood. She saw his left arm get caught between the wall and his body, bending at a grotesque angle and snapping halfway to his elbow. He barely had a chance to cry out in pain before she wrenched him back the other way, a choked gurgle escaping his neck. His body hit the railing where he’d already cracked it before; the whole thing shattered and he started to topple over the edge, but she whipped him back again, bouncing him off the wall one more time before dropping to a knee again and driving her fist into the floor. His body was catapulted forward again, slamming him onto the splintered, jagged stumps of the railing he’d just broken. A piece of the railing pierced his throat just above his chest, exploding out from his neck like a grisly, bloody mountain.

The man’s body twitched a couple of times, and Miriam felt the shadow pull free from her arm and envelop him, covering his entire body in what looked like a sentient storm cloud. There was a sickening crunching sound, like teeth biting into an apple, and she suddenly felt a sharp tug on her body as though a fish hook had caught in her stomach. Another cloud of shadow, this one thicker, more solid, a floating black ball of darkness the size of a watermelon, burst from her chest and disappeared into the cloud. She staggered forward, catching her hands on her knees and panting, sweat trickling into her eyes, as the cloud of shadow disappeared entirely, leaving the desiccated corpse of the man still lying on the stairs, his head dangling limply over the edge.

In that moment, Miriam thought that she’d never been so grateful for a bad hand.

_Three/Four_

Arabella drummed her fingers along the barrel of Matthew’s shotgun, squeezing the butt against her shoulder between her collarbone and deltoid muscle the way he’d taught her. She took a long, deep, shaky breath, shaking her head a little to swing some strands of hair, wet with sweat, away from her face. She’d seen the bright flash of Matthew’s spell, heard Clayton scream a warning, and then someone from behind her had fired at least one shot. Now, as she readied herself, she heard pounding footsteps coming up the stairs toward her position, just as Clayton had said.

Steeling herself, fighting off a wave of powerful exhaustion from her dual spellcasting, Arabella closed her right hand around the trigger guard of the shotgun and dug the toes of her right foot into the floor. She counted the steps as they came toward her, hoping her estimation of the total number of steps in this staircase was accurate, and when she thought her attacker was only four or five steps away, she lunged forward and twisted to her right.

She’d counted right. The man coming up the stairs was five steps down from where she stood, already bringing his weapon up to aim at her. With all the speed she could muster, she swung the shotgun down and fired into his left leg, the force of the recoil almost knocking her over. The blast at this range was so powerful and concentrated that it took most of the man’s leg off below the knee, the lower half of the limb dissolving into a bloody mess of flesh and cloth and buckshot that sprayed back behind him into the rest of the stairs. The man screamed in pain and toppled forward, barely able to catch himself on his elbows.

Gritting her teeth against the pain in her shoulder, and sensing out of the corner of her eye the group of at least three more men advancing on Aly’s position on the floor below, Arabella swung around so her back was to the wall and fired the second barrel directly into the man’s face, taking off most of the top half of his head. The body was blown backward, shattering the thin wood railing behind him and tumbling over the edge onto one of the other men below. Not even waiting for him to hit the floor, Arabella charged forward and leapt off the stairs after the body, turning the shotgun around in her hands so she could hold the butt up over her head like a club.

The body collided with the nearest man to the stairs, taking him by surprise and knocking him onto his back. Arabella felt her feet land on the corpse just as it made contact, driving the man beneath her harder into the floor. His head bounced hard off the wood with an audible _thock_ , a wheeze escaping his mouth as all the air was forced out of his lungs. She brought the butt of the shotgun down in a wide arc, smashing it into his forehead; she winced as she felt the bone give under the blow, a warm splash of blood covering her face. She suddenly realized the metal of the shotgun barrel was burning her hands; she shoved it away, feeling some of the top layer of skin come away from her palms as it went, and slumped to one side, rolling onto the floor on her back. Panting, trying desperately to catch her breath, feeling her knees and ankles throbbing and her vision beginning to blur, Arabella swallowed hard and stared up at the ceiling, the exhaustion of the last few hours finally catching up with her.

_Fuck_ , she thought. _That’s the last time I have two spells going at once._

This time, she thought maybe she meant it.

_Five/Six_

From where Aly crouched behind the corner of the bar, he’d been close enough to Matthew when the spell went off that he’d had to flinch away and dig the heel of his hand into his eyes. His rifle had toppled to the floor beside him, his feet slipping through the puddle of blood seeping out of the dead woman that lay against the wall.

“ _God damn it_ ,” he hissed, shaking his head to try and clear the glare from his eyes. He’d just managed to force his eyes open again when he heard Clayton shout that they were coming his way. “Shit, shit, fuck,” he muttered as he scrambled up to a kneeling position, grabbing his rifle again and ever so slowly lifting his eyes over the lip of the bar. A spike of pain shot through his bad leg, and he clenched his jaw, shoving his opposite shoulder against the bar to keep himself up.

Four men were approaching him, weapons drawn, moving on shaky feet across the open floor. He let out a long breath and hefted the rifle, slowly raising it up to the level of the bar. It was right at that moment when he heard twin commotions erupting from both sides of the stairs and a body came flying into view from his left, Arabella riding down on top of it like some kind of gruesome flying carpet, swinging Matthew’s shotgun like a club. All three of the other men whipped around to face her, weapons coming up to fire, and suddenly the pain in his leg was completely forgotten. In one fluid movement, Aly swung the rifle up onto the bar and fired at the man in the middle. The top half of his head popped off in a geyser of blood and the body crumpled to the floor, still twitching.

The two other men whipped back around to face him and charged at him, stumbling past the body of their comrade. Aly yanked the bolt back on his rifle and slammed it home, pivoting around to take aim at the man in the lead, but the man suddenly dove at him, sliding across the bar on his chest and colliding with the end of the rifle. Aly squeezed the trigger again, mostly on reflex, and the man cried out in pain as the bullet passed through his left shoulder and burst out through the side of his neck, leaving a flap of skin the size of a fist dangling from his neck. The two of them tumbled to the floor in a heap, the rifle slipping out of his grasp as the man landed on top of him, knocking the wind out of his lungs.

The man on top of him made a low, choked gasping sound, blood gurgling in his throat, and wrapped both hands around his neck, spitting mouthfuls of blood into Aly’s face as he started to squeeze.

Aly shoved one hand into the man’s face, trying to push him off, pressing both of his first two fingers toward the man’s eyes; at the same time, he groped around with his other hand for anything he could find. Just as he felt one of the man’s thumbs start to dig into his Adam’s apple, his hand landed on something round, solid and smooth, and he curled his fingers around it and swung.

The thing he’d grabbed turned out to be an empty bottle of some kind, and it smashed and shattered against the side of the man’s head. His grip immediately slackened and he rolled off of Aly and onto his back, gasping weakly for air through the blood pooling in his mouth. Aly spun the broken, jagged remnants of the bottle in his hand and thrust it down into the man’s face once, again, again, tearing deep, ragged gashes into the flesh of his face; the last stab went right into his left eye, and he threw his whole weight behind it until there was a _crunch_ and he felt the tip of the bottle tap the floor beneath his head.

Aly shoved himself up off the floor just in time to see the other man pointing his gun directly at him; before he even had a chance to curse, he heard someone scream, “ _Fogg!_ ”

There was a scuffing sound, and the man in front of him looked up just in time for Clayton to fall out of the sky and land knees-first onto his shoulders, driving both of them to the floor.

_Seven_

The words had barely left Clayton’s mouth before both sides of the stairway and the bar area beneath him erupted into chaos, gunshots, screams and the telltale thumping sound of flesh impacting wood echoing around the saloon. He swung his Colt from one target to the next, scanning his surroundings frantically for a clean shot, but he wasn’t about to risk the safety of any of his comrades against his own adrenaline-spiked accuracy.

Bodies came crashing through the splintered bannisters on either side of the stairway, and a man on the floor below him dove bodily across the bar, and Clayton curled the fingers of his right hand around his gun so tightly he felt his knuckles ache and followed with his eyes as the final man remaining advanced on Aly’s position beneath the balcony, weapon rising in front of him. Before he could get a shot off, though, the man took one step too far and stopped just beneath the edge of the balcony, too far for him to bend over and draw a bead.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he hissed, racking his brain for ideas. The only thing he could think of was fucking insane, even for him, but they weren’t exactly flush with choices right that moment, and he sure as hell wasn’t putting his fate in the Dealer’s scaly hands. One shot of friendly fire to the heart was plenty for one lifetime.

Refusing to hesitate, Clayton took two big steps back, screamed Aly’s last name at the top of his lungs in warning, charged forward and vaulted himself over the railing, using his free hand to swing himself back under the balcony instead of falling straight down. His knees collided dead on with the man’s shoulders, knocking both of them to the floor.

The other man’s arms had raised defensively the instant he’d seen Clayton plummeting down toward him and his gun went off as they collided. There was a searing, white-hot streak of pain up the outside of his left thigh as the bullet tore past him and lodged itself in the wall, followed all too quickly by the teeth-rattling impact as his knees bounced off the floor to either side of the man’s shoulders. Dark spots swam in Clayton’s vision and he gritted his teeth, struggling just to control his breathing; it felt like his kneecaps had been shoved up into his pelvis, everything from the knee down going momentarily numb, like both legs had fallen asleep only this time it was angry.

He heard the other man’s gun fire and then the airy wheeze as the wind was knocked out of him. The man tried to swing the gun up toward him and fire again, and Clayton bit down on the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood, dug his knees into the sides of the man’s ribcage, and caught his wrist with his free hand, trying to force the gun back down. He swung his own gun around to point it down at the man’s face, but the man’s head shot up and he sank his teeth into the flesh of Clayton’s hand. With a roar of pain, Clayton’s grip on the gun loosened. It fell onto the other man’s face and slid onto the floor next to his head. Clayton brought his bloody hand back and punched the man savagely in the jaw. A spattering of blood and a tooth or two sprayed out onto the floor, and he felt the man’s right arm go limp for a second in his grip.

Clayton slammed the man’s arm into the floor until the gun came free from his hand, let the arm go, and put both hands around his neck. He’d just started to squeeze when the man brought his newly released hand up and dug his fingernails into the fresh bullet wound in Clayton’s thigh. The pain was enough to turn his vision red, his hands going slack, and the man pressed his advantage, punching Clayton in the face and knocking him to one side.

The man moved to get up, but Clayton had just enough presence of mind to shoot a foot out and kick him in the solar plexus, knocking him back to the floor. Clayton tried to pull his knees under him again, but his legs had gone almost completely numb at that point. The man got as far as climbing to one knee, and had braced his hands against the one leg to push himself up to his feet when he suddenly convulsed in pain.

Clayton leaned to one side to see Matthew, rolled over onto his stomach, his fingers curled around the handle of a small, rough-looking knife he was in the process of pulling out from nearly three inches deep in the man’s Achilles tendon. As Clayton finally got his hands and knees under him, Matthew swung the knife in a wide arc across the back of the man’s thigh. The man toppled forward, hamstrung, and barely managed to catch himself on his hands. By the time he lifted his head, he was looking right down the barrel of Clayton’s Colt.

“Fuck you, shit stain,” Clayton said, and blew his head off.

The sound of his last gunshot rang out in the air for a long moment, the sudden silence nearly as deafening as the gunshot itself. Clayton wiped the back of one hand across his forehead, shoved the Colt back into a holster, and let himself slump forward, bracing his hands against his knees, which still throbbed with pain. Matthew had let his forehead gently fall against the floor.

“You picked a hell of a time to wake up, Matty,” Clayton said between gasps of air. Matthew let out a chuckle, muffled against the floor.

“I was awake the whole time, just…” he trailed off, grunting, and rubbed at the back of his neck. “…had to catch my breath.” With what looked like a Herculean effort, Matthew pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, still staring into the floor, panting. “You all right?”

Clayton slowly unfolded himself to stand up straight, grimacing as joints popped from his shoulders down to his ankles. “Ask me again in three days,” he muttered, scanning the room for his other gun. “Miriam? Bella? Fogg? Y’all still breathin’?”

“For the moment,” Arabella called out from the floor a few feet away, waving a hand halfheartedly. She let it flop back down to the floor. “And I swear to god I’m never trying to cast two spells at once ever again.”

“She said, lying,” Matthew muttered. Clayton bit back a laugh. “Even so, Bella, I meant to thank you for that,” he said louder. For the first time, he lifted his head and glanced around the second layer of carnage strewn about on the floor. “I’m guessing this means my spell worked, then, huh?”

“Fuckin’ - _I’ll say_ ,” Aly piped up, pulling himself up by the edge of the bar. He was carefully adjusting his rifle, preparing to use it as a crutch if necessary. “Christ, Padre, what the fuck did you do?”

Matthew must’ve really been out of it, Clayton decided, because he didn’t even try to scold Aly for blaspheming. Instead he just shrugged and said, “I, uh…” he swallowed, wiped his face. “I had meant to ask for Holy Fire – I don’t even know if that’s a thing – but when I opened my mouth to say it something else came out instead.” He glanced over at Arabella. “That ever happen to you?”

Arabella laughed weakly. “You ask for your spells out loud? Like…every time?”

Matthew blanched a little. “You don’t?”

She shook her head. “No, I just think of what I want and it usually happens.” She motioned vaguely around them. “And in all fairness, Matt, it sure looked like Holy Fire to me.”

Matthew turned to meet Clayton’s eye. “Did you hear what I said? Right before the spell went off?”

Clayton licked his lips. “I heard _somethin’_ , Matty, but it sure wasn’t no language I ever heard. It sounded like…” He gestured futilely, his mouth working around things he couldn’t put to words. “I don’t think humans are ‘sposed to be able to make sounds like that.”

To his surprise again, Matthew just nodded. “Yeah, that’s uh… kinda what I was afraid of.”

“And let it be a lesson to the lot of you.” Miriam chose that moment to stumble loudly to the bottom of the stairs, catching herself on the bannister. “Matthew, that is the last time I let you talk me into leaving my rifle behind.”

Matthew smiled wanly, leveraging his impressive bulk to his feet. “I have a hard time believing I’ve ever talked you into _anything_ , Miss Miriam,” he said, gathering his rosary back into his pocket. “Or out of, for that matter.”

Miriam glared at him playfully. “You’re far more persuasive than you give yourself credit for, Reverend,” she said softly, gathering up her dress in one hand so she could tuck her pistol back into the holster. “And by the way, I think you’ll all be happy to know that _this_ –“ she wiggled her fingers around her right arm to demonstrate her point, “appears to be done with.” She nodded at the corpse behind her on the stairs, little more than dried flesh stretched over bare bones. “Got one last good bite and pissed off to whatever circle of Hell it crawled out of.”

Matthew nodded at her appreciatively in the middle of helping Arabella to her feet; she leaned heavily against him, legs still wobbly, skin deathly pale, and he wrapped a thick arm around her waist. “Very glad to hear it, Miriam. And thank you again.”

She waved him off. “You’ve thanked me enough for one lifetime, Matthew. Now.” She swept her gaze across the room, wrinkling her nose at the smells of blood, shit, gunpowder and ozone that had finally begun to settle over the place. “I suggest we get out of here before another set of reinforcements comes bashing through the door.”

“Maybe this time we find a back way?” Aly said, limping stiffly over to Clayton. He offered an arm but Aly shook his head insistently and he didn’t push it. “So we aren’t just strolling down Main Street covered in blood and fuck knows what else?”

“Let me just find my other gun first,” Clayton said, pivoting on one heel to scan the floor. “There you are, you son of a bitch.” He stepped gingerly over and squatted to pick it up.

“How the hell’d it get way over there?” Aly asked, raising an eyebrow. Clayton blushed a little rubbed the back of his neck.

“Uh… I threw it.”

They were still laughing at him about it when they shoved their way out through a back door and crept down an alleyway into the Dakota night.


End file.
